News

Ron Johnson and Republicans Hit Panic Button

Posted August 6, 2010

Question: Who Has Three Flat Screen TVs Hanging From their Ceiling in an All White Room?

Answer: Not “Elizabeth Ackland,” But Evidently, Ron Johnson Does

MADISON – This week Republican Senate Candidate Ron Johnson took off the safety glasses that he wears at work and released an ad where he appears in an all white room with three flat screen television sets hanging from a ceiling. As he has done in all five of his previous ads, Johnson talks about the deficit and creating jobs - but after spending more than $2 million on television ads, Johnson has yet to offer any proposals to reduce the deficit or create jobs.

“In his latest ad, as he has done in previous ads, Johnson talks about being a businessman and creating jobs, but offers no plan to do so, said Mike Tate Chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, "In fact, while Johnson has attacked every job creating effort, he has failed to offer any ideas or plans to actually create jobs. Now he is working over-time to try to distract from that fact with over-the-top and absurd attacks on Russ Feingold."

On Friday, in his latest attempt to talk down Wisconsin and the state economic recovery, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus announced in a press release that Johnson has "an actual plan to create private-sector jobs," but the Johnson campaign has still not released the "actual plan."

What Johnson has released to date is his support for unfair trade deals that have shipped Wisconsin jobs to China; support for corporate tax cuts instead of tax cuts for middle class families and small businesses; support for extending George W. Bush's unpaid for tax cuts for the wealthy; his opposition to small business tax credits in the Recovery Act to create clean energy jobs that can't be shipped overseas; his opposition to Recovery Act funding that saved the jobs of teachers, firefighters and police officers; and his support for cutting off unemployment benefits for those who have been laid off and are looking for work.

Two months ago Johnson said, “We would have been far better off not spending any of the money and let the recovery happen as it was going to happen.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/15/10].

"The number of jobs funded in Wisconsin is up significantly from previous quarters, when that number hovered around 10,000 jobs,” the newspaper reported.

The area that saw the most substantial jump was in education. The number of jobs funded by the State Fiscal Stabilization Education grant nearly doubled to 7,391 last quarter after the U.S. Department of Education awarded $236.7 million more to the state this spring. That grant is aimed at saving education positions, from teachers to bus drivers, and is also intended to help avoid cuts."

"The Recovery Act helped keep thousands of teachers in Wisconsin classrooms and recent efforts by our party will make sure teachers have a job and are in the classroom when school starts in a couple weeks," Tate said, "Ron Johnson has turned his back Wisconsin teachers and said their jobs aren't real jobs."

Tate also noted that if in fact Ron Johnson doesn't have an all white room with three, flat screen televisions hanging from the ceiling as he does in his recent TV ad, then he should stop misleading people that he does and take down the ad.